Even After My Death

Even after my death my arms will rise
above and about this city
chipped and aged yet carrying the weight of years--
years of joy and fear and sadness
years of ideas and dialect
rhetoric and argument
comedy and tragedy
Until then they live beneath the ground.

The remains of robes,
the leather of sandals
fallen to dust or
eaten by mice
unraveling for centuries
like a thousand stories
told on this built ground and
remembered by millions.

How solid I remain
My belly swells still with remembered life:
that stage!
where great deeds happened again and again
through story, song, chant, declamation and
The waving of hands
The bellowing of words rushing
over the orchestra and through the stone seats
to the ears of the audience
their whispers are still there

I am the belly and the arms--
all that remains of what was
but what an all!
all that is needed to show
the world
that even after my death
the great plays’ words echo--
those of Seneca, a true Cordoban
and a true Roman,
and of Plautus, that writer of comedies--
from the mouths of the players
whose strides still reverberate on the tiles
the actors’ painted masks laugh or howl or weep--still--
even in the dimmest light
the music, the dance, thrums through the earth
no matter how sunken the theater
no matter how many miles of earth and stone
have been shoveled upon it.
Even after my death,
my arms rise above the destruction of all else
and my belly follows
and all who see are awed.

— Ellen A. Wilkin

Rembrandt's Prints at the DAM

I pace the length of a white wall, and a tiny portrait catches my eye:
A first impression
A youthful face emerges from the swirls
and hatch marks
It stares out from aged paper and under glass
Renaissance hat perched on the head
(he wants you to think he is a man of letters)
eyes wide, lips forming a silent ooohhh!
like inspiration had just pierced him through.

Rembrandt used a mirror to draw his face
over and over
A series of lines, swirls and shadings
To capture an expression
He must have asked himself each time,
What curves exemplify character
and not caricature?
He sketched the same figure of a portly man with a cane
hundreds of times
before he ever lifted a needle to etch it
into wax or to scratch it onto a naked copper plate
And then he made an impression

He produced hundreds of prints from his press—for his own amusement—
fine-lines flowing as hair on a maid
dense hatches for shadows along a beggar's nose,
lines upon lines upon lines representing the darkness
out of which
the figures of Joseph and Mary emerge riding a donkey—
But friends and even members of the nobility loved his pressings
How much would he charge?
He learned that first pressings fetched more guilder
so once made he might as well remake the plate
and he went deeper
He layered on more wax
refilling the ridges
and re-etching a slightly different scene—
a smaller effort than building a new plate—
He created a new state
from which he made a new "first" impression
which sold well
He could do it in his sleep
and so his hobby helped finance his painting

As Rembrandt impressed paper, so he tried to impress people:
He spent all of his rich wife's money on
expensive rugs and drapes and wine and the most exquisite food stuffs
to keep that Renaissance feel
He held parties and rabble-roused—he was much admired!
But then his investments turned sour
And when Louis XIV offered to buy them
for pennies on the guilder,
He sold them all—
His exquisite light-bathed paintings
And even his most precious prints,
The ones he had kept back for himself
Louis stamped them with his seal—
the initials B. R. under a heavy crown—
And hung the works in a vast empty hall—
The "Biblioteca Royale"—
While Rembrandt died a pauper
His wife, then mistress and son already gone.

Yet first impressions prevail:
the image of "Renaissance" Rembrandt
are printed on post cards
and promotional posters for the Denver Museum of Art,
They are reproduced in high quality gloss for coffee table books—
And they somehow still capture the
Startlement—
the instant of knowing,
the moment of change—
when he knew what he could do
and would do
and would become
It's etched on his face!
I see it clear as day on my own post card—
purchased at the museum gift shop—
and it has not changed for almost four hundred years

That instant of knowing...something...
At certain working moments I feel it, too
like looking in a mirror
and seeing that wide-eyed astonishment
Hearing a half-whispered oohh!
Feeling that still sharp scratch of inspiration passing through
to me
and to the next person
and to the next
as we reshape our words
re-angle our brush strokes
or play with the reach of our pencil lines
Before it disappears
(then seeking it, always seeking it!)
And in the background
Rembrandt still works his press
making his "first" impressions
through the painter on the mall
the graphic artist in her garret
the poet sitting staring out her window.

—Ellen A. Wilkin

A Little Package From Across the Pond

My husband surprised me a week or so ago when a little package arrived from the other side of the Pond. It contained a silver Short Cross penny minted in Great Britain for Henry II (1154-1189 AD)! Henry II was Eleanor of Aquitaine's second husband. I now hold this penny close as I write my time travel novel. (For those of you who may not know, I am writing an sf time-travel novel in which my heroine goes back to the twelfth century to meet Eleanor of Aquitaine as a child.)

The tail's side of my Short Cross penny showing the actual "short cross." The lettering is off, but it says it was minted by a man named Hugo in Lincoln, England.

On my coin, the lettering around the edge is cut off. On the head's side it is supposed to read "HENRICUS REX" or Henry the King (Henry II). The tail's side lettering is also somewhat missing, but it says it was minted by a man named Hugo in Lincoln, England.

The note stuck inside the package with the coin. It identifies its provenance. Lovejoy would be proud!

Hubby got the coin from eBay. The package that came in the mail included a note giving the coin a provenance which tells us what is also hinted at on the coin surface itself: that it came from England, was minted during the reign of Henry II (1154-1189), and  that it is one of many Short Cross pennies that were minted during that time. It also tells us that it was minted at the Lincoln mint by Hugo Moneyer who was, as his name indicates the moneyer or minter of coins there.

I got a chill reading this slip of paper, remembering the classic BBC series from the late '80s called THE LOVEJOY MYSTERIES starring the magnificent Ian McShane in the titular role. According to the show, the provenance means everything in the world of antiquing. If you had one that was associated with an object you owned, you were in the money. If you faked a provenance for a copy of a valuable antique and you did a good job, you were also in the money. But in LOVEJOY, you also faced the real possibility of going to jail. If you had no provenance, you were out of luck, unless the buyer's expert was convinced your article was genuine. Lovejoy always walked that line very closely.

My coin is a Class 1 Short Cross penny, which means it was minted sometime during 1180-1189. The way to identify Class 1 is that King Henry's crown always has five pearls in it. (You can just barely count these on my coin.) Class 2, which was minted from 1189-91 and is very rare, can be identified by Henry's head having massive curls on both sides of his head. Class 3 through Class 8 were minted in successive years and have their own identifiable markings (some markings more consistent and, therefore, some identifications more accurate than others).

Following is an example of a Short Cross penny with most of its features intact (because it was stamped more on the center of the silver slug).

Silver Short Cross Coins stamped during the same era as my coin. These coins represent Class 1, the same as my penny. Note that the were minted in a different place and by a different moneyer: Willhem struck them in Northampton England. Copyright Old Currency Exchange blog.

This example shows a silver Short Cross penny minted in Northampton England by a moneyer named Willhem during the same period my coin was struck. It is the same basic stamp, although the lettering on the tail side identifies Willhelm instead of Hugh and Northampton instead of Lincoln. On this coin, which is of higher quality, the cartoon-y image of HENRICUS REX is very clear. It is actually quite an amusing image considering what a serious and warring king he was, even fighting with his own progeny over the kingdom.

The Short Cross penny was actually the second coin to be minted after Henry II came to power in 1154. The first coin, The Tealby penny was struck first shortly after Henry took the throne away from King Stephen (1135-1154). The Tealby penny was introduced to help restore public confidence in British currency. Thirty different mints were used to create the Tealby coinage. This proved to be too many production sites to keep up standard practices. The Tealby penny was an acceptable currency in the kingdom, but the coin itself was of low quality. So in 1180, the Short-cross penny was produced. It was a new style of coin whose quality was more stable than previous coins because fewer mints were allowed to operate and quality could be controlled more easily.

My coin is from the Gisors Hoard found in 1970 in France. It was one of only three Class 1 coins minted in Lincoln to be found there. Gisors France is a town in the Norman Vexin near where the kings of England and France would meet until the beginning of the 13th century. The hoard of coins were found in the court of a house built on the town's medieval wall. The English silver pennies were found in a leather bag at the bottom of what had been a hemp sack full of French copper coins. The copper coins had corroded into a mass of green metal that had melded with bits of hemp material from the bag. However, the leather bag, although degraded, had protected the collection of silver.

Example of Eleanor of Aquitaine silver coins. Unfortunately already sold! Copyright Civitas Galleries.

In researching my coin, hubby discovered that there is an Eleanor of Aquitaine coin as well. However, he was unable to find a specimen for sale. I was interested to know more, so I dove in. What I found was that the Eleanor coins are somewhat rare and are believed to have been struck around 1185 after Henry II had died and when Richard I, the Lionheart, ruled England. Eleanor would have been about 63 years old.

Maybe, someday, I'll hold an Eleanor of Aquitaine coin in my hand. Who knows? But for now I am very happy to hold a Henry II silver Short Cross penny. And my husband, of course!

References:

The British Coins in the Gisors (1970) Hoard

finds.org (UK) Guides: Medieval Coins

The Old Currency Exchange blog

North Shore Numismatic Society, The Short Cross Coinage of England

Wikipedia, The History of the English Penny